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Jay, the chef and son of the owners of the Mexican Hat Lodge, toils over the grill swinging by chains while suspended over roaring Juniper logs in the open-air bar/cafe attached to the lodge. The specialty of the house is the Cowboy steak and I was delighted to enjoy one swinging on this grill.
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MEXICAN HAT DANCE, PART II
In an earlier post, I told you of how the Poet was attacked by fire ants on the Space Coast and also of how his torment at the time looked like a Mexican Hat Dance – sort of. Little did I know then but there was soon to be a second reason to use that phrase.
After leaving the Grand Canyon, I was traveling northeast, through the Navajo Nation, up toward Moab, Utah. The road follows the Little Colorado River, before it joins its big brother, and it features sensational gorges and another painted desert.
To read about Grand Canyon stop, click HERE
Dotted with quaint impromptu trading posts, this . painted desert, though vast, was not as vivid or as vertical as the National Park off to the southeast, but was eye candy just the same.I stopped at several of the small trading posts, one to use the parking area for access to a Little Colorado gorge and the second to pick up some superb buffalo jerky that was advertised on a handwritten road sign.
It was here that I spoke to a Navajo couple that, shockingly, after hearing my voice, wanted to know where I was from and where I was going. After explaining myself, and my plans, they told me they had recently followed most of the same path – only backwards. And they did it in just three weeks. They only stopped a couple of times for a couple of days and otherwise just drove. When I asked them for any recommendations for the road, they told me that, when I was in South Dakota, not to miss the Crazy Horse Memorial in the South Dakota’s Black Hills. I’d heard this before and told them it was already on my short list, which they enjoyed hearing.
I found this couple to be very relaxed and uncomplicated, no stress, reminding me very much of the Inuit Eskimos, or “Real People,” I encountered on journeys previously to northwest Alaska.
Continuing toward the state borderline, I was amazed at how the landscape changed. Suddenly I was surrounded on all sides by these magnificent volcanic mountains, mesas and buttes, everywhere, reaching for the sky from out of the sands, defying gravity.
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A scene from the Monument Valley. Imagine replacing the road with John Wayne and Glen Ford leading a posse through on horseback and you'll see what I saw, and what influenced filmmakers like John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and George Lucas. What an exciting, incredible day I had driving through this area.
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This place had to be referenced on the map, so I stopped and checked. I was in an area called
Monument Valley , a Navajo Tribal Park.
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The next day and about 60 miles north of this area, I was able to gather some information about it:
Monument Valley’s story is like much of the Southwest, formations of sandstone uplifted by natural forces to form mountainous formations, canyons and gullies. Then erosion shaped and mottled these structures, and the minerals embedded in the stone provide the colors. Human occupation is severely limited by the climate, but archaeologists now say ancient Indians lived here before 1300 AD and the Navajo have been here for centuries, herding sheep and other livestock. There is also a small bit of farming here – drought-permitting.
Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I was right about the movie locations too. Major movies that have filmed in this area include: How the West was Won (1942), My Darling Clementine (1946), The Searchers (1956), The Trials of Billy Jack (1973), The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1980) and Back to the Future III (1988), along with countless TV shows and commercials.
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The donkeys retreat after I shooed them from the roadway.
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Continuing along over the border into Utah, I was to go down some very steep inclines, thankfully well marked in advance by the Utah Highway Dept., ‘til, at the edge of a yet another reservation, the road was blocked by a pack of donkeys, half a dozen in number, large and small in stature. They may have been wild, maybe not, but one thing I’m sure of, they were 100 percent stubborn, refusing to move until I got out of the truck and slapped and shooed them from the road. Got a couple of pictures though. (Hmmm … Last night it was the elk and the trailer, today it’s donkeys and the road. Stupid Human Tricks all over the place.)
Back in the truck, down a few more steep twists and turns and that’s where I fell into … Mexican Hat
A Siesta, Then a Swinging Steak
You have, of course, heard of a place being called a one-horse town. Well, Mexican Hat may have had a pony, once-upon-a-time, but it ran off long ago. Three lodges and a gas station/convenience store. That’s it.
So, down another steep hill, a severe right-angle turn and then up a just-as-steep incline and I was in front of the Mexican Hat Lodge.
The sturdy two-story structure, open now for 26 years (in 2006), is advertised as the “Home of Swinging Steaks, Beer Garden and Billiards.” I just had to take a peek. It’s a 10-room lodge with an open-air bar/restaurant attached and with the touted billiards table centered inside the lodge’s sitting room, which is decorated with mounted cattle horns and hides, etc.
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The Mexican Hat, itself, just north of town.
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Across from me at the bar stood a large bandstand, with a wide American flag covering its backsplash and an old wooden dance floor fronting it.
A couple of fridges, a sink and a beer cooler complete this picture, except for the chopping block and serving station in front of two large grates, maybe three foot long and two foot wide each, suspended by chains from a horizontal pole and swinging back and forth over an open red-hot juniper-wood fire in a raised pit. As I watched, every once in a while, the cook would tap the side of the grille to force it to maintain its pendulous rhythm over the reaching flames.
I made up my mind in short order while peering at the brief menu. Each steak coming off the swinging grille looked better then the last. I chose the large rib eye. When the barmaid came over to take my order, after a few words, she says, “Hey, you’re from Boston.” As soon as I heard her speak, I replied in amazement, “You are too!”
We had a good laugh at the irony of two New Englanders meeting in this very remote corner of the desert. Her name was Dawn (not to be confused, she says, with her brother Don) and she was actually from the Berkshires. She was maybe 30, maybe a year or two younger, and she had gotten out of western Massachusetts as soon as she was old enough, come out here some time ago and just fell in love with the desert. She goes home for occasional visits, but she’s making a home for herself and her young son right here on the shifting sands of southeast Utah.
Before I knew it, an incredible looking steak, cooked to perfection, was in front of me. It was on a large platter with heaping sides of pinto beans, salad and Texas Toast (there were no choice for sides, every steak came like that; I’m not complaining though. I gobbled them up).
With a frosty Dos Equis at the ready beside the platter, I dug in. Soon the grille master came over to inquire if the meat was cooked to my liking. Since it was already about two-thirds long gone, I assured him he had nothing to worry about. He told me that the meat came from “Free-range cattle, not some poor cow stuck in a pen all day,” and that it had been locally raised. He added that, “This is steak like your grandfather used to eat.”
His name was Jay, and he was a stocky fellow under his 10-gallon hat – one of those immovable object-type of guys. Son of the lodge’s owners, he was definitely a town “personality,” bantering with the locals swilling beer down the bar, teasing the barmaids and generally adding color to a joint already overflowing with it.
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Home of the Swinging Steak
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Being a fan of steak ever since I got my second teeth, I’ve eaten at almost all the big national chain steakhouses -- Morton’s, The Capital Grille, Ruth Criss, etc. -- and, I can honestly say, none of them do it any better than Jay (“Jay and the Swinging Steaks!” Sounds like a doo-wop group).
Soon the other barmaid, Suzy, was beside me conducting some business, as she moonlights as a notary public. Afterward, we struck up a conversation about her native Mexican Hat. “Got just about 35 residents, give or take one or two,” she said. “Every day people like you stumble through town, and every once in a while one of ‘em stays … No traffic, no politics, no trouble. We just love it here.”
Later, she told me that once upon a time, this area was famous for its huge uranium deposits, buried deep under the sands. But, “The uranium market dried up some years ago and all the mines shut down and everybody just went back to ranching. But now,” she added, rather conspiratorially, “People come down here from all over the world (including representatives, according to her, of some nasty folks in the news lately, you know, the ones wearing turbans), trying to wrest the claim rights from the locals, including some of her close family, that still hold them. (Now I don’t know all that much about the uranium biz, and all that may have just been bar chatter, but that story just can’t be considered good news.)
She also told me that almost everyone in town plays some sort of musical instrument and, for the week before and culminating on Memorial Day, the whole town turns into a country music festival, with some of the finest professional musicians from around the area coming down and sitting in with the townsfolk. It’s a well-attended event, a tradition that’s been going on for years and every room in town was spoken for months ago. She told me that I’d be all right with the trailer though, because they’d be parked everywhere, all over town. (I’d honestly love to go but, as I said before, I’ve got a schedule to keep.)
The Mexican Hat’s restaurant is the kind of place you’d love to find in Key West, Fla. but it is also the type that town’s business leaders and politicians, or “The Bubbas” as locals call them down there, continue to try and shutter in their never-ending quest to upscale and squelch that island’s unique personality.
I mentioned in the introduction to this blog that I was on the lookout for hidden gems. Well, in the spirit of the murals in Florida and the snake house in Texas, I found a diamond in the rough at Mexican Hat. Unpolished, but still finely cut.
Hollywood in These Hills?
There are a lot of movie references contained in this post and, as some of you might know, my late father -- let’s call him Skinner -- had some brief exposure under the Hollywood spotlights. Thanks to his friendship with The Farrelly Brothers and their family, Skinner was lucky enough to appear in four of The Brothers’ comedy features, including the 1998 blockbuster "There's Something About Mary" as well as "Kingpin", "Me, Myself & Irene" and "Shallow Hal."
But, here’s something you might not know:
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That's Skinner, middle, in the sailor's hat in "Mary".
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The Brothers lensed Dumb and Dumber a little bit in Rhode Island, but the majority was filmed right here in Utah, and they had made approaches to Skinner to come along out to the desert with them.
Now, besides his own family and friends, Skinner loved, among other things and in no particular order, cigarettes, steak, music and, after he was cured of golf fever later in life, a cocktail.
So when The Brothers asked him if he wanted to be in their big screen blockbuster, Skinner must have shocked them by mistakenly saying, “Nah, Utah’s a dry state.”
Dismissing the notion with his trademark wave-off and a shrug, he later told me, “So I said, ‘Nothing doing!’ ” (The impression I took away from his story was that actually he was looking for an excuse, masking his instinctive shyness and not bowing to an unquenchable thirst. By the way, as all Skinner fans everywhere saw, he managed later to overcome that bashfulness.)
Anyway (I’m counting on my fingers here), … 1, Steak? … 2, Music fest? … 3, Cold beer?
Too bad! If only The Brothers had chosen to film in Mexican Hat, Skinner could have been the guy smoking a blunt under the big sombrero. Would’ve been half-a-stretch, but I’m confident he could have shined in the role. He would have loved this place. Can’t picture him up on a horse though … Hmmm … Maybe one of those donkeys …
The next morning as I was leaving Mexican Hat, I stopped and asked Jay -- who had traded in his grill fork for a backhoe while working to replace the bar’s dance floor -- to recommend any worthwhile sights on the road up to Moab, Utah. He suggested I visit a dinosaur museum up north in Blanding, Utah, which was good advice. However he forgot to mention the Valley Of The Gods, just beyond the other side of the next hill.
And on The Eighth Day …
From what I’ve seen and heard, the locals take this scenery for granted (ho-hum, just another absurdly fantastic vista. These cowboys should go sit in some offices for 25 years, and then see if they take notice!), but to not mention this place is a sin …
Now, if one was to pick up a Bible and open it to its first page and chapter, Genesis 1, one would find out that, for the very first little while, God did the grunt work, making the earth out of a heavenly hash, if you will. Then came night and day, so He could keep track of time (even though, I’m sure, God wasn’t punching a clock or anything). Next came the sky and with it, of course, the weather. So far, so good … even the weather!
On Day 3, very busy now, He divided land from the sea and later, the story says, He made that land good & plentiful (The candy came much, much later).
Pleased with His progress, God was on a roll. In the next few days, He accessorized, flicking up the on switch for the sun and the stars, and then rolling out all the animals along with the fish and the birds, the snakes and the insects. One big happy Animal Kingdom.
Feeling strongly now that joint would need some sort of middle management, He created people, pesky even in those very early times.
He felt He had to sit mankind down for a stern talking-too about responsibility, telling the new tenants to get about the business of building up their brand and, as a general practice, to keep things down to a dull roar.
After that, He showed them around the new setup, explaining how to work the levers, which buttons to push, gauges to read and so forth (“OK, now crank back slowly on the carnivores ... Yep, that’s it. That’s … Nope, nope… Slower…”).
Satisfied, God knew that all work and no play makes for a very dull deity. So, near the end of one busy week, it sort of says in The Good Book, He took a chill pill.
After tossing his white coveralls – you know the ones, with “Creator” monogrammed on the left breast pocket -- in the laundry bin marked “Extra Bleach, No Starch,” God scrubbed and scrubbed, ‘til his grimy hands were clean. He then shut off the overhead lights in His workshop and closed and double-locked the door.
So on the first day of the next week, by the time God was laid out on a lounge chair somewhere by a celestial shoreline, lathered up in SPF 35 and catching 40 winks with a very early edition of the Garden of Eden Gazette draped over his face, that’s probably right when things went plum loco in southeastern Utah.
Because this place is absolutely otherworldly:
Castles, towers, pyramids, mountaintop fortresses, Buddhist Temples, hands with upraised fingers reaching skyward -- this panorama was truly haunting.
After a while I realized of what it reminded me. The scenery was reminiscent of sets used in Akira Kurosawa’s films. The late Kurosawa, recognized as film royalty worldwide, was the master Japanese filmmaker whose stylish medieval Samurai epics spawned or heavily influenced flicks ranging from spaghetti westerns to the Star Wars six-pack, along with many others in between. Could it be that these shapes and forms, seen in the old westerns, influenced Kurosawa?
On the 17-mile loop in the actual Valley of the Gods, you pass by formations with such names as the Seven Sailors (with seven cylindrical stones side-by-side with flat rocks tilted at different angles atop them, looking for all the world like a gaggle of German sailors in those Bundesmarine caps), Setting Hen Butte and Battleship Rock. Truly though, there is much more to this area than just the named creations. Much, much more!
The shapes and sweeping vistas are more striking then those in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, and the color mixes -- crimson, green, orange, yellow, milky gray – are magical.
Now, I’m no physicist, but maybe all this has something to do with the uranium harmlessly buried far below. Some sort of fission collision?
Digging Up Some Dinosaurs
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Desert needles: The Navajo Twins
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From what I’ve seen and heard, the locals take this scenery for granted (ho-hum, just another absurdly fantastic vista. These cowboys should go sit in some offices for 25 years, and then see if they take notice!), but to not mention this place is a sin …
Now, if one was to pick up a Bible and open it to its first page and chapter, Genesis 1, one would find out that, for the very first little while, God did the grunt work, making the earth out of a heavenly hash, if you will. Then came night and day, so He could keep track of time (even though, I’m sure, God wasn’t punching a clock or anything). Next came the sky and with it, of course, the weather. So far, so good … even the weather!
On Day 3, very busy now, He divided land from the sea and later, the story says, He made that land good & plentiful (The candy came much, much later).
Pleased with His progress, God was on a roll. In the next few days, He accessorized, flicking up the on switch for the sun and the stars, and then rolling out all the animals along with the fish and the birds, the snakes and the insects. One big happy Animal Kingdom.
Feeling strongly now that joint would need some sort of middle management, He created people, pesky even in those very early times.
He felt He had to sit mankind down for a stern talking-too about responsibility, telling the new tenants to get about the business of building up their brand and, as a general practice, to keep things down to a dull roar.
After that, He showed them around the new setup, explaining how to work the levers, which buttons to push, gauges to read and so forth (“OK, now crank back slowly on the carnivores ... Yep, that’s it. That’s … Nope, nope… Slower…”).
Satisfied, God knew that all work and no play makes for a very dull deity. So, near the end of one busy week, it sort of says in The Good Book, He took a chill pill.
After tossing his white coveralls – you know the ones, with “Creator” monogrammed on the left breast pocket -- in the laundry bin marked “Extra Bleach, No Starch,” God scrubbed and scrubbed, ‘til his grimy hands were clean. He then shut off the overhead lights in His workshop and closed and double-locked the door.
So on the first day of the next week, by the time God was laid out on a lounge chair somewhere by a celestial shoreline, lathered up in SPF 35 and catching 40 winks with a very early edition of the Garden of Eden Gazette draped over his face, that’s probably right when things went plum loco in southeastern Utah.
Because this place is absolutely otherworldly:
Castles, towers, pyramids, mountaintop fortresses, Buddhist Temples, hands with upraised fingers reaching skyward -- this panorama was truly haunting.
After a while I realized of what it reminded me. The scenery was reminiscent of sets used in Akira Kurosawa’s films. The late Kurosawa, recognized as film royalty worldwide, was the master Japanese filmmaker whose stylish medieval Samurai epics spawned or heavily influenced flicks ranging from spaghetti westerns to the Star Wars six-pack, along with many others in between. Could it be that these shapes and forms, seen in the old westerns, influenced Kurosawa?
On the 17-mile loop in the actual Valley of the Gods, you pass by formations with such names as the Seven Sailors (with seven cylindrical stones side-by-side with flat rocks tilted at different angles atop them, looking for all the world like a gaggle of German sailors in those Bundesmarine caps), Setting Hen Butte and Battleship Rock. Truly though, there is much more to this area than just the named creations. Much, much more!
The shapes and sweeping vistas are more striking then those in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, and the color mixes -- crimson, green, orange, yellow, milky gray – are magical.
Now, I’m no physicist, but maybe all this has something to do with the uranium harmlessly buried far below. Some sort of fission collision?
Digging Up Some Dinosaurs
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| Click for SLIDESHOW |
Utah has some of the most prominent dinosaur digs in North America and, to promote that fact, it has 10 dinosaur-connected attractions.
On Jay the Grill master’s recommendation, I tracked one down -- The Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah.
The women working at the Dinosaur Museum couldn’t stop laughing as I queried her about the place. She thought I was from England. That aside, it’s still a very cool place to tour with some actual fossils along with many casts from dinosaur digs and some scale models.
Some new information on some very old animals has recently come to light: that many dinosaurs may have been covered with feathers rather than scales, and this museum has some
On Jay the Grill master’s recommendation, I tracked one down -- The Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah.
The women working at the Dinosaur Museum couldn’t stop laughing as I queried her about the place. She thought I was from England. That aside, it’s still a very cool place to tour with some actual fossils along with many casts from dinosaur digs and some scale models.
Some new information on some very old animals has recently come to light: that many dinosaurs may have been covered with feathers rather than scales, and this museum has some
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A Tarbosaurus skeleton.
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There were also a lot of exhibits of popular culture concerning prehistoric times, literature -- including comic books and pulp novels -- along with film posters, including a long corridor displaying on both walls many vintage movie house advertisements for flicks such as Lost Continent, with Cesar Romero headlining and the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. with Victor Mature and Lon Chaney Jr. topping the bill.
Open April 15 to October 15, this museum is well worth a look-see.
Mea Culpa …
As I stated above, I’m no physicist. Heck, I can’t even count. In my last post, I added a zero to some calculations about money made by that Grand Canyon helicopter service. The correct annual total for income generated by this business is just a hair shy of $53 million. I removed the incorrect reference from that post. Sorry …
Next On The Agenda
Visits to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and some new friends made in Moab, Utah. Then, a couple of days at Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park.
Mea Culpa …
As I stated above, I’m no physicist. Heck, I can’t even count. In my last post, I added a zero to some calculations about money made by that Grand Canyon helicopter service. The correct annual total for income generated by this business is just a hair shy of $53 million. I removed the incorrect reference from that post. Sorry …
Next On The Agenda
Visits to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and some new friends made in Moab, Utah. Then, a couple of days at Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Urban renewal is unheard of in the Four Corners area. The Rockefeller Trust was broken up in 1911, splitting the Standard Oil monopoly into pieces. That probably is right around the last time this place was occupied. Notice the Wiccan symbol painted on the front corner.
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